[Aztlan] Classic Maya Unit of Length

[David Hixson]

Hube Smith sent this vignette about how land was measured and felled by mecate during his project documenting modern Maya practices for "Living Maya":
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  Yes, that whole process is in our series, Living Maya. The act is called (as you know) the brecha and it is preceded by prayers and offerings to the various duenos of the land, the balames, and the Catholic pantheon.  It is, according the the literature I know, an asking of permission to move the land from the the spiritual realm to man's use. When we first translated the prayers, we found them laced with references to various saints. Aha, we thought, rampant syncretism. But upon further questioning, we found the saints named were the names of surrounding ranchos.  The prayers were to the duenos of those surrounding lands but there was no way of naming them without using their names--saints' names. 

       
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